What really is an Action RPG. Is PoE the characteristic example?
|
Doesn't matter really. Dark Souls is one of the best Action RPG's aswell as Path of Exile.
Pants of Textile
|
|
|
Once upon a time I told myself I would quit trying to teach people mathematics on the internet. Thanks for reminding me of that.
|
|
|
If you told someone your favorite fighting game was Doom or Mario, you'd be laughed at. Why? Doom and Mario have fighting in them, and they're games. But by the term 'fighting game,' you aren't just passing along the literal meaning of the words - you're also passing along the implied understanding of a game designed in the same broad strokes as Street Fighter or Tekken.
Action RPG is the same way. It's a very vague term that COULD be used for almost anything, especially since more games are incorporating upgrade and leveling systems these days. But when people say ARPG, they mean a game designed in the same vein as Diablo, or Sacred, or Titan Quest. Sure, you could just come up with a very long term that literally described all the implied understandings that that short label is meant to communicate, but that would be extremely inefficient for conversational purposes. Abbreviating complex, bulky ideas into convenient, tidy little packages is part of the purpose of language. |
|
|
PoE is the characteristic example of a Dungeon Crawler as is what games like it spawned from. If you read up on David Brevik, the creator of Diablo (a game whose successor Diablo 2 inspired PoE), its inspiration came from the game NetHack, a Rogue-like which itself is a Dungeon Crawler RPG
Diablo was just a Dungeon Crawler with realtime rather than turn based combat added to it. PoE has an MMORPG like town system, the rest is Dungeon Crawler. I believe a Dungeon Crawler can be classified under ARPG, which is what PoE is broadly defined as. |
|
" Here's the baby version. What is a RPG? What is an action game? Mash that shit up. Simple. It is a vague term; wanting to make it more does not make it so Saying "an aRPG is basically a Diablo clone" is flat out wrong. Or what have you, Titan quest, torchlight, sacred.......... Good games? Cooooooooool they didn't define the genre: the sub genres did. Is it an RPG? Does it do the action thing? It's an aRPG. Everything else is wishful thinking, and you're all wishful folk. Devolving Wilds
Land “T, Sacrifice Devolving Wilds: Search your library for a basic land card and reveal it. Then shuffle your library.” |
|
" Wanting to make a specific set of words pass along a concept agreed upon by the majority is, in fact, how language works. It's only 'wishful thinking' if you don't get enough other people to agree with you upon the definition. If enough people think 'Diablo clone' when you say 'ARPG,' then that is what that term means, regardless of the literal meaning behind the words. When I say fighting game, do you think of every single game with 'fighting' as a concept literally in it, or do you think Mortal Kombat, King of Fighters, etc? |
|
|
This is a discussion that has been around for a long time. A good read on the subject can be found on Gamasutra:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/185353/focusing_creativity_rpg_genres.php The author of the article talks about what we mean when we talk about various types of 'RPG' games, and describes a couple of categories he labels as "Narrative RPG" (The Witcher, Mass Effect, Dragon Age), "Sandbox RPG" (Fallout 3, Elder Scrolls) , and "Dungeon Crawler" (Torchlight, Dungeon Siege, Diablo). Those games are all sometimes gathered under the same label of "Action RPG", even though the main focus of those games are very different. I think that perhaps people are looking for a term that describes any Diablo-style game, and only Diablo-style games, and have settled on ARPG as it. If that's the case, I think they're misusing the term, and trying to apply it too narrowly. - here's my sig
|
|
|
I don't mind trying to put a genre/label on PoE, as long as this is inductive and not deductive. What I mean is that it shouldn't be coercive. I often saw on these forums people saying that since PoE is an ARPG, it should be like this or like that. They take an "apriori" definition of the genre PoE is usually related with, and so they feel entitled to say that differences between the pre-defined "ARPG" genre and PoE itself should be seen as flaws in the game.
Two typical generic examples of that on the forums : 1/ "ARPG's like Dark Souls require skills and reflexes. Most PoE encounters are just giant gear checks with cheesy mechanics that you mostly trivialize by wearing a certain type of gear. It's BS since it should not be like that". 2/ "ARPG's have in no way a trading aspect in their very core definition. Since it's nothing essential for the genre, trading is a flaw and should be removed from the game". And I could keep going. PoE is PoE. People can say it's an ARPG or whatever afterwards, but that's it. IGN : @Morgoth
|
|
" Useful for what? discussion? It is proper terminology. In one wants more specification of a game that the parent genre is too large to provide, then one refers to subgenres This message was delivered by GGG defence force.
|
|
" Different ideologies have different opinions regarding that. One can hold the opinion that only for completely new words should one ignore etymology for the simple reason that there is none. By "completely new" I mean words that are not combinations or modifications of already existing known words, prefixes, etc. For instance, in English "xyasaderslok" would probably a completely new word, while "polyfocal" would be a combination of existing constructions: "poly" and "focus". For "xyasaderslok", there would be few if any restrictions on what that word can mean, for "polyfocal" there has to be a logical connection to both "poly" and "focus". This message was delivered by GGG defence force. Last edited by mazul#2568 on Nov 1, 2014, 5:49:41 PM
|
|
